TRC Students Attend International Transportation Research Program

Transportation Research Center Research Assistants Paola Rekalde Aizpuru and Phoebe Girouard Spencer were selected to attend the highly competitive Aalto University Summer School on Transportation in Finland. The summer program describes itself as “premier institution offering innovative and practical approaches to understand and solve complex transport problems both in developed and developing countries”. Paola and Phoebe will be documenting their trip through daily blog posts that we will feature on our website. The first post comes from Paola and is describing what she is hoping to get out of this challenging academic experience:

Based on the course schedule, many different transportation topics are going to be discussed during the week. I am looking forward to learning how can sustainable transportation and social well-being be linked to megaprojects in both big and small cities, improving regional and local development.

Besides analyzing case studies of successful and project failures, we will also be studying the challenges of future sustainable transportation of goods and people. Addressing socio-spatial inequality issues through transportation, and improving mobility options for the population can lead to a great increase in quality of life.

Of course, the acquired knowledge will be applied to my research and thesis back in the TRC. In addition to sharing my own research experience and approach with the rest of the course attendees, I also hope to get different research perspectives from both students and lecturers. Having such a variety of professionals sharing their transportation experience with us can be such a positive experience that could be later applied to our own work back at the TRC.

Phoebe and I will also be exploring the daily transportation options and quality in Helsinki.

~ Paola Rekalde Aizpuru

We look forward to providing more updates from Paola and Phoebe’s experience in Finland throughout the week.